Pakistan’s army extended an offensive against Taliban guerrillas in its borderlands with Afghanistan, its chief spokesman said.
Troops moved into the mountains of Kurram Agency, a
tribal district that Taliban factions have used as a base, according to Major
General Athar Abbas yesterday. While Abbas declined to give details, the
newspaper Dawn and other Pakistani media cited residents and officials as
saying thousands of troops were involved, some flown in by helicopter.
Taking control of central areas of Kurram may enable the
army to block the last major escape route for militants based in North
Waziristan, the country’s biggest remaining guerrilla stronghold where the U.S.
has pressed Pakistan to conduct a ground offensive, said Ashraf Ali,
director of the FATA Research Center in Islamabad, which monitors the
conflict in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
“The government is not prepared to make a broad, overall
offensive into North Waziristan,” as the U.S. is demanding, Ali said in a phone
interview yesterday. “But going into Kurram may be part of a strategy to
isolate the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan,” or TTP, and prepare for a more
selective ground attack into Waziristan, he said.
A successful occupation of Kurram would prevent militants
from fleeing to Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, from where Osama bin
Laden escaped an attack by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in December 2001.
The TTP has been the most aggressive Taliban faction in
attacking the Pakistani government. Afghan Taliban and other militant groups in
the border zone have focused their warfare against U.S. troops
in Afghanistan.
Families Flee
The Kurram offensive comes days after a prominent
Pakistani Taliban commander, Fazal Saeed Haqqani, broke his forces away from
the main TTP movement, saying he objected to its use of tactics that have
killed thousands of civilians in addition to Pakistani security personnel.
As the army offensive began, more than 1,000 families
fled central Kurram to escape the fighting, Khalid Ilyas Khan, a director of
disaster management operations for FATA, said by phone.
*To contact the reporters on this story: James Rupert in
Islamabad at jrupert3@bloomberg.net; Anwar Shakir in Peshawar, Pakistan
at Ashakir1@bloomberg.net
*To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter
Hirschberg in Hong Kong atphirschberg@bloomberg.net
